Six sentenced to death by hanging for horrific mutilation
of teenager in Zarqa, Jordan
They brutally assaulted 16-y/o in October, chopping off his hands and gouging out eye
Published: March 17, 2021 14:54
Khitam Al Amir, Chief News Editor, Gulf News
The boy was kidnapped, and had his hands cut off, his eye gouged out. He was found sitting by the roadside, bleeding from his arms and unable to cry. The video, which was out on social media, caused horror nationwide.
Dubai:
Jordan’s State Security Court on Wednesday sentenced six men to death by hanging for brutally assaulting a 16-year-old boy in Zarqa in October, local media reported. One of the six was sentenced in absentia.
The verdict was announced during a public court session where 17 defendants were being tried for their involvement in the horrific crime in which the boy was beaten up, and had his hands chopped and an eye gouged out.
One defendant was handed out a 15-year jail term, one was sentenced to 10 years, two others to one year each, while seven others were acquitted.
Following the crime, the boy, Salah, underwent multiple surgeries on his eyes and arms. A total of 50 witnesses provided testimonies for the prosecution and defence of the case.
The brutal crime caused nationwide outrage, with calls by social media users and rights activists demanding the severest punishment against the perpetrators.
Aussie spy agency says it won’t call out ‘Islamic’ terrorists,
but will say ‘religiously’ motivated attackers instead
17 Mar, 2021 12:01
Responding to terror incident in Sydney, Australia. (FILE PHOTO) © Reuters / David Gray
Australia’s spy agency is shifting the focus on how it describes the enemies it hunts. From now on, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency (ASIO) will use the term ‘religiously motivated’ instead of ‘Islamic extremist.’
I'm not sure this is going to work. Muslims decry that extremism has nothing to do with Islam (even though almost all extremists are Muslim). So to call such people ‘religiously motivated’ seems to put all the blame on Islam! This will not go down well with Islam for very long.
“We don’t investigate people because of their religious views – it’s violence that is relevant to our powers – but that’s not always clear when we use the term ‘Islamic extremism’,” Mike Burgess, the director-general of ASIO said. “Understandably, some Muslim groups – and others – see this term as damaging and misrepresentative of Islam, and consider that it stigmatizes them by encouraging stereotyping and stoking division. Our language needs to evolve to match the evolving threat environment.”
How can the word 'extremist' encouraging stereotyping? Muslims want to disassociate themselves from extremists who are almost always Muslims, and Aussi and western governments and police forces seem only too willing to help them. Tell the truth: if they are Muslim jihadists, say so; if they are right-wing terrorists, say so.
Australia’s top spy also said his agency will no longer use the terms “far-left” or “far-right” to describe threats from the edges of the political spectrum – instead the ASIO will refer to “ideologically” motivated extremists.
The shift in ASIO’s war on words was detailed by Burgess, as he delivered the agency’s annual threat assessment from its highly secure headquarters in Canberra on Wednesday. ASIO is part of the Five Eyes international network of spy agencies that includes the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, sharing information and intelligence sources.
Other Five Eyes agencies have changed their nomenclature and ASIO is following suit, Burgess said.
Last year, Burgess was taken to task by Aussie Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who claimed ASIO was upsetting conservatives by using the term “right-wing extremists.”
“Right is associated with conservatism in this country and there are many people of conservative background who take exception with being tarred with the brush,” Fierravanti-Wells said.
Burgess said ASIO had to change the language it uses because many of the people it watches – mostly male with an average age of 25 – don’t fit “traditional” labels. Instead, they are motivated by a fear of society collapsing, hold specific grievances, include involuntary celibate ‘incels’, or adhere to conspiracy theories. And he said that these cases made up 40% of ASIO’s work last year, up from 30% the year before.
And it has much to do with the government's determination to hide the fact that most terrorism is Islamic in origin. Most Terrorists are Muslim, yet the government and media work hard to protect the public from knowing the truth. This will just add to the distrust by far-right extremists.
Dagestan woman refused custody of her children after court determines she has ‘immoral’ lifestyle — because of tattoos & piercings
17 Mar, 2021 15:34
A woman in the Russian region of Dagestan is suing her ex-husband after he allegedly beat her for six years and then ran away with her children. She hasn't seen them since a court ruled she lives an "immoral" life due to tattoos.
Last summer, a court in Makhachkala, the capital of the majority-Muslim Russian republic, decided Nina Tseretilova shouldn’t have custody of her children because of her lifestyle, which “does not meet the norms.” The 33-year-old has piercings, tattoos, and dyed hair, and refuses to wear a hijab. The judge ruled in favor of her ex-husband, Magomed, who owes her 800,000 rubles ($11,000) in alimony.
The children had lived with their mother ever since their divorce, and the father played almost no role in their lives. However, when she demanded alimony payments from him through the courts, it was ruled that she was not fit to take care of them.
The judge’s decision was made on the basis of Tseretilova not following “the rules of behavior of a mother with many children,” and specifically that she has “tattoos with inscriptions depicted on her body.”
“I haven’t seen my children for three months. I don’t know their residential address or who they are with,” she told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “They are not at his place of residence nor at school.”
Tseretilova is half-Russian and half-Avar – an ethnic group from the North Caucasus. In the West, the most famous Avar is Khabib Nurmagomedov, a former world champion mixed martial artist. She was born near Tver, a city near Moscow, where she lived until she was six. Two years later, her father’s relatives allegedly performed female circumcision on her in an Avar village. She entered an arranged marriage when she turned 14. According to the woman, she was regularly beaten by her husband and filed for divorce in 2012.
In early 2020, when she decided to sue for alimony, her ex-husband, who has a new family in Moscow, took their three children, she says. Five days later, they were returned after law enforcement intervened. Since then, he allegedly repeatedly took them out of school, and threatened to bring them to the capital.
Tseretilova believes his taking the children was a ploy to avoid paying alimony, and claims he does not work. When her case finally came before the court, she was shocked that the judge found against her and that she would be refused custody.
In December last year, her ex-husband once again took the children away to an unknown location. After she filed a claim to the police, they told her they could do nothing, as the court had ordered that they remain with their father.
He told a very different story. According to him, the children asked him to take them away. Tseretilova regularly went to nightclubs, staying out until the next morning, and wasn’t a responsible mother, he claimed. “I promised the children a long time ago that I would take them to my place,” he said.
Tseretilova has appealed, and the next hearing is scheduled to be heard imminently.
